Month: December 2014

It is hard to forget the Atalissa Boys, especially when the ugliness repeats. Four men with intellectual disabilities were recently removed from a rundown bunkhouse in the small town of Newberry, S.C. Like the men from Atalissa, the four are former employees of now disgraced Henry’s Turkey Service. Their horrendous treatment is being investigated by several government agencies. In the late 1960s, these men were recruited, mostly from Texas state institutions, to learn turkey insemination and work in various Henry processing plants. Ultimately living in squalor and earning scant wages, the men toiled for decades. One of the South Carolina men, for instance, went to work for Henry’s when he was 18. He was 64 when finally removed from the bunkhouse. This man, Leon Jones, is a brother to Carl Wayne…

What are your favorite childhood memories of Christmas? I remember getting up early and pouncing on my stocking, which was always filled with a few pieces of candy, a few small toys or trinkets and a lot of fresh fruit and nuts. Santa would also leave one or two gifts, often with a bow on top but seldom fully wrapped. The ongoing joke in my parents’ home was that Santa was a health nut. This is why he always delivered fresh fruits and nuts — he wanted us to be healthy. The truth about the fruit, however, dated back to the years before I was born, when our large family had many children living at home and few resources. Placing fruit in the stocking was a way for my cash-strapped…

Don’t forget to enjoy the dance. That’s the advice my first newspaper editor offered nearly every time I left to do an interview. A good-natured cynic with an internal scale for fairness, I’m convinced Rudy embodied most stereotypes surrounding newspaper guys. His clothes were rarely free of wrinkles, not that he noticed or cared. He could remember the name of the old city manager’s brother’s cousin’s side business, but couldn’t find his keys. The top of his desk was the inspiration for Jenga; his bottom left drawer the keeper of whiskey and Dixie cups. And I was the green banana that soaked up his advice like sunlight. Rudy had a theory on interviews. They were, he said, a lot like dancing, with each person hoping to show off their own…

Sally Mason, spokesmen could benefit from sunlight Last Friday morning, as I turned the corner of Clinton and Washington streets en route to a breakfast meeting, a figure on the Pentacrest caught my eye. It was early and still foggy as I stared, my brain racing to register what it was seeing. I flipped through scenarios: a mostly white trench coat, maybe a homeless person, a lighthearted holiday sock-top with an elven point at the top. Bile rose as I moved forward, seeing the shape of a person in the ceremonial garb of white supremacists. Anger percolated. Hateful scenes, talk and writing from my past in the South flickered. A sign on a country road announcing a curfew, punishable by death, for people of color. Students teasing a new white…

It may have hit a nerve. My column last Saturday focused on recent demonstrations and how they are evidence that certain segments of the population are feeling excluded. While several responded with their own stories of how they’ve been or felt isolated from the larger community — especially bodies that make policy decisions, others insisted that “some people” need only get off their … ahem … rear ends if involvement is truly a goal. As is typically the case, most feedback was somewhere in the middle, with readers wanting more participation but remaining too cynical to believe it will or can happen. Within that pile, three responses by area police officers caught my eye. The officers generally agreed with my assessment that more community business needs to be done within neighborhoods, allowing…

USDA opinion on ICCSD policy offers new opportunities With or without the blessing of federal assistance programs, the existing strategy for economic diversity in the Iowa City Community School District was going to fail. Research — specifically a 2010 Century Foundation study of student placement in Montgomery County, Md. — provides evidence that a balanced socioeconomic playing field at neighborhood schools increases student achievement in ways targeted resources do not. In the Montgomery County study, researchers followed 850 students living in public housing. Those who attended the most-advantaged schools performed significantly better than their peers in lesser-advantaged environments. This remained true even as additional resources were pumped into the lesser-advantaged schools like increased professional development, additional math and literacy instruction and reduced class sizes. Montgomery County schools boast a 90 percent graduation…

One of the best things about working in the media is the access it provides to all facets of the community. When combined with innate curiosity and a penchant for organizing, this access results in piles of string — journalism shorthand for scraps of information that don’t warrant their own report, but that could possibly be valuable in the future. Since I’m curious about barriers to civic participation — not only why this person doesn’t participate, but why this neighborhood tends not to participate — I collect string on how groups interact. Some pieces are incredibly benign. For instance, a woman told me that she and her husband alternated attending meetings to save on child care. Others, however, provide glimpses of how infrastructure availability is determining civic and social participation.…